synapses
by Lora Perry
Summary: He tells Avery. Of all people he tells Avery. That his brother flipped. That he tried to kill their sister. He tells Avery. Jesus Christ.


"_My brother just had a psychotic break and tried to kill my sister. And if he got hurt, even if he got hurt hurting people, I'd want his doctors to do everything they could to save him. No matter what, he's still my little brother"_

_

* * *

_

Alex doesn't know why he tells Avery. He's not Meredith. He's not even Yang. Fuck, he's not even Lexie. But he tells Avery…Avery, who lost his two best friends in the shooting last year. Who doesn't understand why the shooter isn't always the bad guy. Avery, who guards April like a big brother [like the big brother he could never be]. He tells Avery.

His brother. Fuck man, his brother just _snapped._ Like a twig, like that fucking pathetic reminder that Karevs are fragile and limp and they can't stand up to anyone. That at any moment it's all over, and then you're breaking hearts and vases and making baby sisters grow up far to fucking fast.

He fucking tells Avery.

* * *

Fucking psychotic breaks and brothers and a bloodline destined for screw ups. A little sister scared and glaring at him through hospital window panes and a reminder, a constant fucking reminder that he ran and he didn't look back and the rabbit hole just gets wider and wider. It wants to swallow him but he can't let it. So he fucking ran and be damned who that hole ended up taking.

Amber hates him. She's got straight brown hair to the middle of her back and a woman's body and eyes that should still be innocent and reflecting bunnies and shit like that but don't. Her mouth is twisted into a grimace when she sees him, nods when he enters into Aaron's room.

Sedation. Figure out his regiment. A cracked rib.

Could the Queen's Horses and Men put the Karev family back together again?

* * *

No of course not, retard.

* * *

She had to get stitches in her face. Aaron had come at her and all she needs is stitches, so Alex thanks the God he's always hated that that's all that happened to her physically. Her body is curled into one of the plastic chair on the outskirt of the ward, and he sits down next to her. Holds her hand, she smiles, weakly, squeezes it and lets go.

Tries to find the words that sum up, _I'm sorry I've been gone for seven years, _and _I'm sorry that this happened to him _and _I'm sorry I wasn't here _and _How's life _and _Do you still like turtles? Cause you used to like turtles?_ He instead asks if they gave her a cream to rub on the cut.

She sighs. Turns to him and tells him that she used to have these heroic dreams about him, dressed in a white doctor's coat like it was some sort of comic book cape. He would come back, to Iowa, to the corn and the mediocrity, and save everybody from everything, and then he'd come to her dance recitals.

But he had never come.

Dreams are petty things.

She had graduated in May, a blue gown and cap, member of the Art Honor Society and vice president of student council and somewhere in the top 25% of her class. There's a picture of her at the ceremony in her bedroom smiling wide with friends beside her; it's next to the dent in the wall and the blood stain because fucking Karev's have weak bodies and even weaker minds. Only smiles never tarnished are the ones in the past.

_You just never came home._ But then he did come home, held Amber's hand outside of the psychiatric ward, her scraped face twisted away from him.

"I hate you" she whispers, tracing small patterns into the wooden arm rest of the bright orange seat she's made her own. _Is purple still your favorite color?_

"I know." He responds. I'm sorry he doesn't say.

He leaves. Signs Aaron into some nuthouse on the edge of town, contemplates putting his mother in too. Gets her pills. She screams at him from the front porch of the house he had lived in once; tells him he's worth nothing; he's the spitting image of his father; that he might as well have died.

* * *

"I read about you. On the internet. You, helping people, they said that you keep creating these new innovative ways to help kids. I saw that special too, about the aftermath. I…I didn't know you had been shot. No one told me. It looked pretty bad. In your armpit or something?"

She's wearing a cotton dress, the small white gauze patch on her left cheek standing out brightly against her tanned skin. Her boyfriend, a guy who goes to Iowa State and encourages her every other day to apply for spring semester has his arm wrapped around her waist: protecting, defending, claiming.

Alex is not welcome anymore.

"Yeah. I uh, I tried to call Aaron when I could, but things were pretty hectic."

Hectic: adjective. Means that he had a tube down his throat and agony coursing through his veins and Lexie crying in the seat beside his bed. Means Meredith has a husband in the room next door and Yang was just being creepy and Reid was so fucking dead that his insides still hurt when he thinks about it and New O'Malley was now dead just like old O'Malley. Means that he couldn't piss by himself for ten days. Couldn't walk on his own for fifteen. Means that he lost more blood than a human should lose and that he had almost entirely other people's blood in him, which as a doctor is okay, but as a guy who once took a Lit class entirely on Stephen King it just freaked him out…a lot.

She raises an eyebrow at him, at his words. He would have said she got that from him but seven years is a lot of time and a lot of miles.

"I'd imagine. But, you're okay now, right?" Sweet smile. She doesn't deserve this life. He doesn't fucking deserve this life. Aaron with his medication and around the clock supervision doesn't fucking deserve this life.

And "okay" is relative. Because he's attracted to crazy. And he was shot in a hospital of all place. And he still gets scared sometimes alone in elevators. And he thought, just for one god damn second that this was the end and that he'd left Aaron and Amber for good; and his mom was gonna not have meds.

"Yeah." He says. Because there's no point in saying anything else.

"Good." She says. He wonders how much she cares; how much is instinct; how much of a better person she just is compared to him.

The boyfriend nods his head. Says they should be leaving. There headed to the campus. She'll stay with him for a couple of days. Get her life in order maybe. Cry a lot maybe. Pretend like she's not a Karev maybe.

She could change it. Her last name. Huh. Wouldn't that be something.

"What's your last name, again, dude?"

Quirked eyebrows again, not of his own making.

"uh, Kendell."

Amber Kendell. She could escape the curse.

* * *

He had a dream, after the shooting happened and before all this new shit piled up and aimed at the fan.

Aaron and Amber, living with him, in Seattle.

Amber at the college nearby, studying and drinking coffee at all the different shops in downtown while she gets a degree in something whimsical that won't lead to a good career. She only ever comes to the hospital to bring him brownies and lives unmarred and doesn't know what stitches look like.

Aaron gets a job at one of the warehouses down by the docks, is quickly promoted up the ranks, learns how to sing off tune workman songs. He buys the beer on Friday nights and goes fishing with Joe when the doctors are busy.

Life was happy. And totally not screwed up.

Dreams are petty things.

* * *

Mer finds him, later.

"You told Avery."

"Yeah"

She sighs the way she does, hesitating only a second before laying a hand on his arm.

"You okay?"

A loaded gun.

Nodding because control is all he has left, isn't it?

"Liar."

* * *

His name is Alex. Not Alexander. He feels like that's an important distinction. Proves that he's rough. That's he's ragged. That he's not distinguished, refined, or anything. He's Alex; just a guy who should have been more to a lot of people

Son.

Brother.

Husband.

But he can't.

He could blame a lot of people. A father who wasn't a good person. The foster parents who couldn't understand a little boy who hurt but had never learned how to express it.

A mother who never knew how to mother.

He could blame his college girlfriend who taught him what love was all about when he found her fucking one of his frat brothers in a bathroom his senior year.

He could blame Izzie but love still traces its path through his veins.

But he doesn't blame. He just accepts.

Alex Karev, rotten at every role that life has given to him.

The reviews are in, and the critics say he can't act to save his life

Or anyone else's.

* * *

Avery tries to come up to him the next day, those blue eyes an ocean of emotions Alex is not inclined to take a dive into.

"Hey man…" Avery starts to say, before a single glance from Alex silences him.

"Just, don't."

"But, I, I, uh.." Do gooders and heart bleeders and why the fuck did he tell Avery?

"Dude, seriously, just forget I said anything alright. I don't need your pity."

"Thank you." He blurts out, looking reading to run, head first, anywhere from here.

"What?"

"Just, uh thanks. For your, you know, insight. It got me through it all. Yesterday. It was pretty crazy, and that, what you said. It helped. I even talked to her. Not the shooter, that was a guy. But his mom. I, I uh helped her, told her what was going on. No one else would, and that sucks, you know, not knowing what's going on, and if they've died or just not breathing and if the red is from someone elses' blood or their own and…"

"Dude. Chill."

Everyone forgets that Avery did a shit ton during the shooting. That he probably lost more than most, that he held his own in a gun aimed operating room. That he may have even saved the day. Everyone forgets about him, and it shows up from time to time. Mostly, they all ignore it. Temper tantrums and haunted eyes are all the norm in these ghastly, ghostly halls these days.

"Just calm down, alright," Alex continues, eyes appraising the harried expression on the other doctor's face.

"I just wanted to say thank you. And that I didn't tell anyone. I mean, I told Meredith, cause she's like, your person, going by their words, but I think she already knew and…"

He keeps talking. Alex lets him. Nods. Grunts when he needs to. Sighs.

He doesn't know why he fucking told Avery.

But it was probably a good thing that he did.


End file.
